It's gotten me nowhere as well but it has allowed me to be me, which is quite alright. I wasn't trying to get anywhere necessarily. But I was always comfortable with that.

It's a painful existence to be oneself and see the negative consequences/treatment by society because of it.

It's also a painful existence to be someone else, and live an unfulfilled life.

And it's a rewarding experience to be oneself and eventually find the set/setting/companion/environment that correlates to you in a fulfilling way.

Sometimes that's very difficult or impossible. It is never the easiest choice, but worthwhile things rarely are.

I won't deny the importance of luck.

There are things one can do to increase their apportionment of luck in life, but outcomes are not guaranteed.

I don't mean to be glib. Equanimity is required for lasting contentment. Equanimity comes more naturally with age.

Yet equanimity alone will not bring contentment either.

i don't want to pry, but if you don't mind, what kind of negative consequences are you experiencing?

i too experience negative consequences, but these are owed to finding it difficult to make friends. however, i do not believe that this difficulty comes from doing what is suggested in the article but rather the reverse, the difficulty to make friends is something i grew up with, any behavioral quirks developed later as a consequence of not having friends.

so in other words, the negative things you experience maybe don't come from being yourself but because you may be missing something else, something that may have had a hand in shaping who you are now.

Yes, it can be. I am lucky and very fortunate in that I have found places to live where I can be myself and am around people who value that even though they may not understand me or the way I live.

what makes you think that getting nowhere is caused by you doing as the article suggest?

i am just curious here, not judging. where do you want to get, and what do you think it takes to get there?

i too thought that most of the points applied to me and my feeling was that i would be miserable if they didn't. i can't in fact imagine living another way. this is me, and i am going to make the most of it, regardless what others think.

(to all the commenters who suggest that this list makes for a miserable life: if that's the case then this list is not for you. it's for those of us who don't enjoy following others)

i'd like to share one specific experience that seems relevant. in highschool i was a contrarian. a quiet one who expressed this by wearing different things than everyone else. at one point i realized that if everyone else started to copy my style then i would change my own style, and that meant that my style was just as dependent on others as was everyone elses.

that realization made me stop being a contrarian and instead i simply chose a new style that i could enjoy on its own regardless whether it differentated me from anyone or not.

so instead of asking: will this differentiate me from others?, i am asking: is this comfortable for me? is this something i want? does this fit into my principles of life? ...

Being contrarian and being anti-mimetic are different things.

The simple thing is that people who get promoted (or any other favorable thing) are the ones who share the most similarities with the person doing the promoting. I see this all the time at my company and in my life. This is even true in things like law and government (law enforcement and prosecutorial discretion).

Just stop doing isn't necessarily an option. Why should one not be their true self, and how difficult and painful would that be? Some people are stuck between the options.

of course, the point is that i eventually realized that i didn't want to be contrarian and somehow transitioned to some form of anti-memetism.

that has led me to be mostly self employed, and when i did take on employment then it was to further my own interests and not toil away on something that i could not identify with just to earn some money. i have never been in a position to be promoted in my job, so i didn't think about that. though it is possible that at least one termination of a job was influenced by my anti-memetic behavior, but that let to some interesting new options, so in my case it was not detrimental.

and yes, not being anti-memetic just isn't an option for me either.